Well done LF, who passed with 5 driver faults today.
I was worried when the door opened and I was waved over, but it was because she’d said at the beginning that she didn’t want me with her on the test but she did on the debrief. Phew!
She’s one of the best pupils I’ve had – very fast learner, excellent driver. And there’s always that extra satisfaction when it’s one you taught from scratch.
Her exams start this week, and she’s going to University in September, so today was a good start to an important next part of her life. That’s why I love this job.
I wrote a little while ago aboutthe ridiculous behaviour you get from some people on web forums. That last story concerned a forum know-it-all who likes to dissect posts claiming everyone loved him and respected him – even after he’s wound one of them up with his behaviour.
Well, the fun and games never stop! On the same forum recently, the administrator removed a thread completely (which they rarely do) because a certain person was trying to prove that every single instructor working for a large National School – which he repeatedly named - was incompetent and purposely employed to be that way (this is known as “libel”). The libel was based on this person’s extremely limited experience and intellect, and his inability to realise that the “half dozen or so” cars from that school he sees over a week are probably the same car most of the time, and represent perhaps 0.2% of the cars that that school operates nationwide.
That same poster has now gone off on one about how other motorists park and block the road. He said (punctuation – or lack thereof - is real):
I can add to this I parked in safe place at end of lesson with pupils first drive home we parked in safe place another car comes and parks opposite us. then 4 minutes later another car a peers beeping trying to get through. I did not get pupil to move the car or make any attempt to move the car myself I was in the middle of a serious conversation and lesson planning. he had to wait and right fully so was not our fault someone parked opposite us.
Isn’t that strange coming from someone who thinks that what he thinks he sees another school car doing applies to all cars from that school throughout the know universe? What does it say about his school, deliberately causing obstructions and annoying residents and passers-by?
You really do have to wonder how these idiots manage to stay on the Register of Approved Driving Instructors.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve got a pupil to pull over so we can do a turn in the road or discuss something, and another driving school car has stopped directly opposite us on largely empty roads. So there must be a lot of people like this guy around.
GMTV did a skit on the problems of speeding drivers. The organisation, Brake , which conducted the research says via the article:
Almost three quarters (72%) drivers surveyed by the road safety charity and motor insurer admitted driving at 35mph or faster in a 30mph zone.
Half of these offenders (36%) admitted doing this daily or at least once a week.
I was on a Pass Plus session with someone last week, and we were on the M1 heading towards Leicester Forest East Services at about 8.30pm. She commented on how many people were going faster than us, which prompted me to switch on my camera. You need to bear in mind that we were doing a steady 70mph (and before anyone says it, yes, we seemed to stay in the middle lane for quite a long time – that was because someone was hanging just behind us on the nearside AND she’d never been on a motorway before, so I was explaining how to make sure it was safe to move over, IF you should, and WHEN). This video covers a four-minute section of the drive.
Just look how many people go past us, and at what speed (again, I emphasise that we were doing a steady 70mph). It was like this all the way down, and all the way back.
On normal lessons, virtually no one adheres to the speed limit. Some are just idiots, others are dangerously bad drivers – my pet hate is the older driver who drives just a little bit faster than you when it is a lower speed limit (i.e. is speeding in a 50mph zone), pulls in just in front, then continues at that same speed (so slows you down) when the limit increases to 70mph. They just like to drive at 35mph on urban roads, 45mph on wider roads, and 55mph on big roads… irrespective of the limit that’s set.
I took the car in for its routine service today, and I was driving along the Ring Road over Clifton Bridge. Traffic was heavy, but free-flowing.
I’d gone on to the bridge from the Nottingham Knight/A52 end into the left lane over the old bridge, and traffic was coming up from the Clifton/A4534 side. I was behind a lorry, and there was nothing behind me – and I don’t just mean there was a big gap: there was literally nothing behind me at that point. I casually noticed a dark red Skoda Felicia (reg. no. P563 DRB or P568 DRB ) moving very slightly faster than me in the next lane to my left.
When we got to the end of the bridge where the middle lane he was in goes down to the roundabout, the imbecile just pulled in front of me into no gap whatsoever. He nearly forced me off the road and into a barrier. I sounded my horn long and hard but it didn’t stop him at all.
His cheery wave changed a little when he saw me using universal sign language to describe what a dickhead he was.
The best part was that he had a kid in the front passenger seat – no child seat.
I think he then reached down for a piece of paper – presumably to write my reg. no. down – and was doing this with the kid sitting alongside him. He was going above the speed limit, and he then cut in late again in froint of someone else close to the Dunkirk Flyover to go down University Boulevard.
People like this shouldn’t be allowed to breed. Unfortunately, they’re the ones who breed uncontrollably.
I wrote about this a year or so ago, but one of the best things I ever bought was a set a flyscreens from www.flyscreensuk.co.uk (tel. 01628 481919).
Hinged Flyscreen
I used to have major problems every year with my computer attracting all kinds of winged nasties – huge moths, daddy long legs, every gnat and midge in a 2 mile radius. It still does, of course, except that they cannot get through the flyscreens!
I’m not lying when I say that last summer I did not have a single bug get through – and that includes those thunder flies (thrips) you get every year (tiny little black things).
I received a mail-out today, and Window Screens UK (the name of the company in question) has opened a new showroom so you can see what the products actually look like. They’ve revamped their website, and introduced some new products (including ready-to-fit roller blind screens and spares/accessories for the whole range).
I honestly don’t know why I put up with the problem for so long, before wondering if it were possible to get flyscreens in the UK. They are, after all, very common elsewhere in the world – particularly America.
The screens I bought were self-assembly (very easy), and they fit over my window cavities using continuous magnetic strips. I really do recommend them to anyone sick of flies getting in the house.
Well done LJ, who passed with just 3 driver faults. The examiner even commented to me as he left the car that it was a very nice drive. She’s a good driver, and a very pleasant person – and good luck with the new career direction.
This has to be the lowest form of behaviour ever demonstrated by a politician, and it’s been done so late that I doubt it will damage his chances of winning the election (I wonder if his spin doctors did it deliberately?). But it should do.
Listening to the radio between lessons, I heard that David Cameron is touring Notts Primary Schools in a last-minute canvassing exercise. I’m sure there must be some vote-winning motive, because even Cameron must know that primary school children can’t vote. But their parents and teachers can, of course.
I heard a soundbite of him talking to the kids. I can’t find it anywhere at the moment, but if I can I’ll post it.
In it, he was telling the kids what the election was all about. This involved likening Gordon Brown to their headteacher, with final snidey comment and chuckle.
Didn’t Hitler do this sort of thing with kids in Germany in the 1930s?
I was driving over Trent Bridge this afternoon (around 4pm) and I glanced in my mirror at the turn off up Wilford Lane whilst waiting at lights. A woman in a red FIAT (reg no. FE53 EGL ) was going at the phone text message she was writing like you wouldn’t believe! And she did exactly the same thing again at Compton Acres.
Someone told me this morning that an instructor had been wheel clamped for parking on one of the roads near to the Colwick driving test centre. It was one of those licensed cowboy companies who charge £150 or more for unlocking you.
At a guess, I’d say someone with no conscience or morals decided they’d found a way of making some money now that the test centre is located around there, and so attracts learner cars. Inside the test centre, notices warn that the likes of Trent Concrete (Road No. 3) have been bitching about learners using the car park outside their property.
I have to admit, instructors sometimes don’t help themselves. Only yesterday I had gone behind Halfords (to cover bay parking) for the sole reason that there was no one else there. As always, if there had have been anyone else there, I’d have used another area of the park (and there were plenty free yesterday). But that didn’t stop a BSM car (with more than two people in it – looks like he was piggybacking) turning up and getting in the way. He actually prevented us from driving off (we’d finished, anyway), but this is happening time and time again. I hope he can lip read, because his cheerful wave didn’t cut any ice with me!
But they behave this stupidly wherever they go. They do corner reverses when there are cars parked there (illegally, admittedly, but that still doesn’t make it OK to block the corner completely and piss other drivers off). They queue up to use THE corner, or THE bay, or THE car for parallel park. They don’t have the brains to find somewhere else. They are STILL ignoring the test centre manager’s ban on practising bay parking at the test centre itself (and one of them is a BSM car), and holding up tests (including one of mine a couple of weeks ago).
There are quite a few places I use over a very wide area – but many of them only when it is quiet (or out of hours). There’s one girl whose car I often use for parallel park who I surprised at Christmas by taking her a bottle of wine and saying thanks for not kicking up a stink, but I have quiet and reliable places I can use in wide-spaced places such as Sawley, Long Eaton, Bingham, Clifton, West Bridgford, and plenty of others – I just have to plan the lesson accordingly. But some prat who is trying to keep his mileage to a minimum and who only works daytimes/weekdays is bound to try using a private car park when the offices are still open, and so get us all banned. That’s why those bloody notices keep appearing at the test centre. To be honest, some of these idiots only ever seem to do bay parking – it must be because it saves on petrol.
If anyone has any more details about this alleged clamping, please let me know using the Contact Form.
EDIT 20/05/2010: Apparently it has happened again – someone sent me this photo:
BSM Car Clamped
Something has got to be done. There are no signs, no yellow lines… nothing to suggest you cannot park on the road. In fact, fishermen park there for extended periods.
I never leave my car unattended. I can only assume this guy either did it to take his pupil into the test centre for a look round, or went for a walk down by the river in a free period. There’s nothing else down there – no shops or anything.
Mind you, there is one positive that appears to have come out of it – for some people, at least. A few of the forums are full of it – very sad people gloating uncontrollably due to the fact that it is a BSM car.
As I’ve said before: driving instructors, eh? What a bunch of sad cases some of them are!
EDIT 01/06/2010: I was at the test centre yesterday, and noticed a letter pinned to the noticeboard. It is from a company called City Estates , and they advise that for “health & safety reasons” the “landlord” of the Colwick Industrial Estate has introduced wheel-clamping. The urge people to follow the “parking laws”.
City Estates’ website is not particularly dynamic. The one and only link on it is to a company called West One . Interestingly, when you click this link (and compare West One’s address with the one on that letter at the test centre) you find that City Estates and West One co-exist at the same address in Sheffield – and a quick scan of West One’s portfolio of commercial properties it lets out reveals that units and land on the Colwick Industrial Estate features prominently.
Warning Sign
So it looks like the “landlord” City Estates is warning us of, and who has introduced clamping, is… City Estates. Fishy, eh? And who sets the “laws” they are referring to? I guess that would be City Estates, too, seeing as it is a private estate and there are very few yellow lines.
I was talking to someone who works at the test centre and apparently a lot of cars and lorries have also been clamped (so it isn’t just instructors, after all). The move isn’t popular, but as this person said: “what can you do?” I was told that there was a Health & Safety audit carried out and the roads were snarled up with lorries and cars.
I’m still not convinced. It’s a punitive action designed to make money – and I’m pretty certain driving instructors using that area has had more to do with it than the lorries who park(ed) overnight on a regular basis for years.
Oh, yes. And there are now warning signs – they were never there before, and they aren’t very big. Some are placed quite high up.
I saw this small article in today’s Daily Mirror .
L OF A WIN FELLAS
By RICHARD WRIGHT
MALE drivers are claiming victory over women after a motoring survey.
It found females take longer to pass their tests, needing an average of 21 lessons compared with just 17 for the boys.
Men are also more likely to pass first time, with less than 54% needing another attempt, while 57% of women have to take a second test. Women are more likely to suffer from nerves, with 92% saying they were terrified before their test but only 78% of men.
Comparison website www.confused.com carried out the study and a spokesman said: “For years, people have argued over whether men or women are the best drivers. And men can now claim victory with these results.”
Let me just set the record straight – and I should add that my data are probably more accurate than those confused.com has come up with.
99% of women are shitting themselves before their tests
99% of men are shitting themselves before their tests
The article also strongly suggests the following:
women are slightly more honest than men
Asking people how many attempts they had before passing is not the same thing as how many attempts they actually made.
Official statistics from the DSA show that the average number of hours a complete novice takes before taking their test is 45 with an instructor and 22 additional hours private practice. The quickest I have had anyone pass their test without any previous training and no private practice at all is around 23 hours. Most people take between 30-40 hours, and do lots of private practice, so Heaven knows what the confused.com data are showing. I suspect it is either a complete pack of lies from the survey correspondents, or people only including their last instructor hours (I lose count of how many come to me having done 30+ hours, and then do another 10-20 with me and pass – and even then, not necessarily first time).
But “17 hours and first time” sounds better than “well, 20 with my first instructor and failed my test, then I did another 10 with my second – but he retired, so I did another 15 with my last instructor and passed”. I think confused.com needs to wake up and smell the coffee – this business is far more complicated than that. In fact, what they are suggesting is highly irresponsible: it will make people think they can drive after 17 hours, but then they will wrap themselves round a tree because they simply haven’t got the skills and experience, even if they do scrape the test. But at least it will push insurance premiums up, so the winner would be… confused.com .
One final thing. A small bunch of liars telling you their personal fantasy does not prove that men are better drivers than women, although that’s what the report concludes.
Men are better drivers than women 😈 However, this survey doesn’t prove that in any way, shape, or form!
I wrote a little while ago about
